Now Comes the Night
by Mornen
Summary: 'From the pieces that are given one, a life must be shaped.' An expanded tale of the life and friendship of Beleg Cúthalion and Túrin Turambar. Genres: Tragedy, friendship, adventure, horror, angst.
1. Prologue

_Author's notes: This is a story following the brief, but important, years that Beleg Cúthalion and Túrin Turambar spent together. It has been forging in my head for over a year now, and has changed quite drastically from what I at first imagined to what it is presently. _

_Since this story uses quite a few time jumps, I have chronicled it against Túrin's life, and will give his age at the beginning of each new time period. If no time period is given at the beginning of a new setting it is either a dream, a memory, or a flashback with the real time being whatever was already mentioned, or a new location in the same time. I don't think it should be that hard to discover which. _

_And, lastly, this story is a work of fanfiction and I make no claims on any of the characters or the locations (although I will have to claim much of the plot, since I had to invent so many different things: events, people, etc.). I do not claim to be or think that I am the great J.R.R. Tolkien (I would be quite insane if I did) and therefore I purpose to make no money from this, nor will I shove a gun at anyone and make her swear on her life that this story is the new canon and should be read without question (again, I would be quite insane to do that). So, yes... Aren't disclaimers fun?_

* * *

_Prologue_

* * *

_Come good brother, little brother,_

_Pretty playmate of my childhood,_

_Start now with me for the singing_

_Sit together for the speaking,_

_Now that we have met together, _

_After separate pathways travelled;_

_Seldom do we come together,_

_Rarely do we see each other_

_In these ragged border regions,_

_These benighted northern marches._

_The Kalevala_, Runo 1, Translated by Eino Friberg

* * *

_Túrin - seventeen years of age_

* * *

'Do you see the stars, my brother?'

From the north a wind was blowing, and the clouds above trembled and fled before it over the night sky; still the stars shone, brightly furious. Túrin could barely make out Beleg's face from the darkness that surrounded them, but he could see his eyes, shining like the stars that he asked him to see.

'Yes,' he whispered, closing his eyes as he answered and drawing the blankets they shared closer to his face to keep out the wind and the coming frost.

'Winter is nigh,' Beleg whispered to the air. For a time, he was silent, and the strange noises of the night covered his breathing; he could have been dead, lying there, with his eyes open and his body still. But it was only briefly that Túrin noticed this, and then the thought passed like ice flowers beneath a warm breath.

'Do you spend winters beneath the stars, Cúthalion?' He asked as he leaned over slightly, supporting himself on his tired elbow.

With a smile, slight and true, Beleg answered. 'I have slept in the snow, but it is not often that the drifts beckon as a bed, and snow offers itself as a blanket. We have shelters, in the north.' He shifted over as well, turning towards Túrin; the wool blankets scratched together, wrinkling beneath his strong, pale hands. 'Do you fear the winter?' His eyes, silver-brown like the trunk of a poplar tree under moonlight, glittered with mischief and a muted curiosity.

But Túrin did not hear the jest in his voice, and instead turned back over, staring up without answer at the stars above them. 'No, I do not fear it, Beleg,' he said softly after long moments had passed, and Beleg had felt sleep closing over him; the voice cut the air and shattered the dream wavering in his mind. 'I do not fear it.'

'I am glad.'

* * *

_The wind would have blown the house over; it would have wracked the ground bare beneath its hidden strength and shattering wail; it would have taken everything that he knew and blown it to the distance that screamed after him; but he stood in its way. So the wind tore at him. Somehow he barred its path across the empty fields, brown and yellow with dirt and dying hay, though his body ached, and his eyes were closed against the wind's fury. _

_He could hear voices calling one to the other as he stood, bare feet digging into the cold mud. One voice was high and lovely – as soft as a chick's feather; another was strong and low – it seemed too deep to exist; the third was calm and steady – calling the others to it with certainty above the storm. The last voice was thin, breaking, hopeless; he could hear it stumble over words in despair as his lips opened and closed with it, yet it was not his voice. It came from far away, from the mountains he could see rising into the ravaged sky, from a boy who shared his name and his face, but who was already dead. For a moment, he saw him, shrivelled and grey against the hard rocks and soft moss, his blue eyes open and glazed, his small mouth open and screaming, the tongue swollen inside, and then that child – he – was gone, and all that remained was his cry: 'The hills are lonely, where hope is lost!'_

_He had opened his eyes, and the wind was tearing at them, trying to take them from his sockets and cast them far afield so that he would forever have to see the sights that he had opened them against – the body, the eyes, those broken rocks he had fallen over as a child, when he was still that child, before the child had died without him. The moss would kill him; it was hungry for his blood. _

_He turned from the wind in despair, still holding himself between it and his home. It was so much stronger than he had imagined when he had first stepped against it in foolish daring. Already his skin was peeling from his sore muscles and tired bones; his feet were lifting, broken, from the ground. No longer could he hold back the wind, and so he fell._

_Rising, he was swept towards his own house on the carefree, dogged wind that howled its laughter against his ears and filled his throat with dust and mud, grass. _

_For a moment, he saw his mother, tall and strong against the house; her hands were bleeding, the fingers torn, some almost gone. She held her hands against her stomach, where her dress rose with a child he had never seen; the blood stained the white cloth of her apron and fell down in red streams, writing out 'life' in jagged ruins. By her side, the doorpost was frayed and covered with blood, already dry, still dripping; his mother turned, pressing her face against it, and then he was against her, his wild embrace tearing her down as the earth rose to swallow her. In another instant, she was gone with only her cry for him frozen in the cold air, echoing forever in the north. _

_The house was gone when he looked up again, and his father sat alone at the table in the vastness of the nothing that he had called his home. He laughed heartily against the wind that wracked him, his face red with mirth, his hands clenched in wide fists against his sides. 'You don't understand! You don't understand!' he called between the laughs, looking always at the table in front of him. As he laughed, the earth shook, and at each shake he cried that. 'You don't understand!' And then, Túrin fell against him with the wind, and his father was blown away into the horizon, laughing always, his cry mercilessly there._

_In the fields, now empty, stood one last figure, and towards her he was flying, faster than he could ever hope to run. Golden hair blowing in the wind, blue eyes open in wonder and fear, she stood, small and helpless against the brown earth. Her earlier cries for her mother had been replaced with silence, and she stood quite still as he came down towards her, unable to stop himself or the wind. Looking up, she saw him, and recognition filled those eyes of bright blue, so joyful in her life. 'Brother,' she whispered, her voice barely audible against the shrieks of the wind and the never dying voices of his parents that haunted the air, 'why did you not come with me?' But his body drove her down before he could answer her, embrace her, and the mud leeched over her, drowning her face and her searching hands. And then, there was silence._

* * *

From the north a wind was blowing, and the clouds above trembled and fled before it over the night sky; still the stars shone, brightly furious. And Beleg slept by his side.


	2. Chapter 1

_Frost shall freeze_

_ Fire eat wood_

_Earth shall breed_

_ Ice shall bridge_

_Water a shield wear._

_Anon_, translated from the Early English by Michael Alexander

* * *

The wind was strong the day he was born, coming, already tired, already screaming, into a cold, grey world wracked by winds and covered by mists that hung, low and light, over the wintering earth. His mother took him into her arms in silence and caressed his face with her hand, which suddenly looked too large and strong against his small features, red and wrinkled, frustrated. His father took him into his arms with laughter and promised him strength and life and victory against the trials that even his joy and hope could never destroy or fully forget.

They named him Túrin in the darkness.

* * *

Túrin – four years of age

'Do you ever watch them, Húrin?' She stood by the small window, looking out across the brown, empty field that late autumn had brought, turning the green garden of the gentle summer dark and cold with its frost and long days. Arms crossed firmly over her thin chest, she stood, absently feeling hers ribs beneath the heavy wool cardigan and plain linen shirt, beneath her skin and what little fat she, as a woman, had sustained.

Her husband sat on a thick bench by the long table, his harp held against his chest, but he did not play it. Bent over, he studied the floor – the wide planks of the wood, the dark and the light of the knots and grains that stuck out to him where the sunlight managed to touch them. Strangely, he was not smiling, yet his eyes were not bright and sad like hers. 'Do I watch whom?' he asked, lifting his head to look at her.

But she did not turn to him when he spoke, and there was a long silence before she answered him. Raising her hand, she scratched gently at her scalp, just above the bun, underneath the kerchief she had tied some time ago around her dark head. 'Your children,' she said solemnly. 'Do you ever watch them play?'

He laughed when she said that, and the laugh shook the house, large and rich for the North. 'I do indeed watch the children play!' He exclaimed, placing the harp down on the table in front of him and standing up with a clap of his hands against his knees. 'It is not such a trouble.'

The air was cold where she stood, stealing inside the warmth of the kitchen through the windowpanes. 'I wonder about them. The way they stand.' She placed a finger to her lips, tasting the salt on her skin. _He watches her. He guards her. There is so much that I see in him I could never tell you. So much you see in him that I would never understand. Is it always this way with parents? Or is it only you and I, Húrin? _'So much like you.'

He went to stand beside her, placing his hand on her shoulder, feeling the warmth of her body and the chill of the air. 'What do you mean, Morwen?' he asked her. 'The way that they stand?' He looked out the window at them; the girl was picking clumps of dried flowers that rose from the mud, and the boy stood some distance behind her, straight-backed against the wind. 'Like me?'

'She's beautiful,' Morwen whispered. Her hair, her eyes, her little frozen hands – every laugh and smile meant something beautiful to the world. The way she turned when the wind blew was music, looking to her brother, offering him the brown flowers, shining in the setting sun.

'She is.' And he put his arms around her waist, drawing her close to him. He laid his chin on her shoulder and pressed a kiss against her neck, another one just below her ear. 'And he is.' He kissed her jaw, her firm-set chin. 'Like their mother. _Beautiful._'

Túrin turned towards the south, where Lalaith had run, and he called out to her, but Morwen could not hear his voice. 'And yet.'

'No,' he said. 'It is not a time to speak of such things.' He pressed his hand over her heart, kissed her cheek. She did not turn her face to him. 'They are ours, like our love, and will be forever.' Again he kissed her, turning her face towards him, pressing her lips with his warmth and his life. 'Do you love me, Lady?'

And she folded her hands on the small windowsill, feeling the splinters and the rough wood that bit at her calloused skin. 'Forever,' she said.

* * *

She had not run very far before she stopped to pick another flower, taking the dry brown stem into her hand, and twisting it towards her so that it snapped and broke. With ragged edges, still lightly green in the centre, the broken stem stood in the dirt, shivering in the wind. She added its flower to her growing bouquet, pressing the hard stalks tight between her hands, enclosing them against her thin chest. She smelt them, with their dust and their rustling petals, and sensing a long-lost fragrance or the memory thereof, she smiled and walked with more care.

Túrin followed after her, step by silent step, his feet leaving little prints behind him, his arms folded against him, holding his cloak tight. The sun was already low in the sky, and he watched it as it sank still further, disappearing behind the mountains in the West. The rays reached up towards the sky, brushing the clouds there golden, golden like his sister's hair.

She stood in the middle of the brown field, dead flowers still tight in her hands. Her skirt whipped about her legs, and her hair danced about her face. She stood, staring at him, her blue eyes narrowed against the sun. 'Brother!' she called out to him, and she laughed as he stepped towards her, scurrying further still.

'Do not run, Lalaith,' he called after her. 'Our mother is calling us in.' For his mother stood in the doorway, calling out their names across the field. 'Come with me.'

So she turned to him, taking quick steps across the empty field. He took her hand when she reached him, pressing her fingers tight in his; they were cold, frail.

'My flowers,' she whispered, and he carried them home for her.

* * *

The wind wracked the house, trying to reach between the logs to push away the mud and grass meant for protection. Winter was hard and fast, snow and rain, ice and mud. It was not a normal winter, not one that everyone expected and waited for. It was warmer, wetter, crueller. It mocked the old tales and laughed at the new children. It meant death with the moisture that crept into the wood; death with the mould that rotted the wood; death with the disease that lived in the wood. And their wooden buildings, built to shelter and protect, turned against them in the warm winter.

Túrin lay in his small bed, listening to the relentless tattoo of the rain on the roof. Looking up, he could make out the patterns of the wooden shingles above him. He felt small in his bed, tucked firmly beneath wool blankets and a bear fur. He turned onto his side, but the bed was cold where he had not been lying, and he turned back to his previous place, shivering already. Drawing the blankets tighter to him, he whimpered to the ceiling.

He wondered if he would be welcome in his parents' bed, where his sister often fled when the night was too long and cold. But he thought that he might be too old to be welcome there; his father might not want him pressing against him for warmth. He remembered winters before when his mother would take him from his bed and put him in hers, steal the blankets from his and cover them both with them. He could remember lying next to her one night when she was carrying Lalaith; he placed his hand against her stomach, which was round and firm.

'Yes, Túrin,' she had said, although he had not asked her anything.

They year before had been a particularly cold winter. He remembered how he thought that the water in his eyes would freeze, that his fingers would never again bend. He spent the entire winter sleeping in his parents' bed it seemed, tucked against his father and little Lalaith, someone's arm invariably around him. But he had been much younger last year, and it had been much colder. He closed his eyes and wished the night to pass.

From somewhere outside his room, he heard a dog turn over and scratch itself. It growled low and then settled down again. The wind rose up, and the fire fluttered. He heard Lalaith whimper. The night would be long.

* * *

'Blast, Mablung. Where are you going?' Beleg turned over at the sudden loss of warmth in his makeshift bed. He blinked the sleep from his eyes, and sat up, supporting himself on his elbow.

Mablung he could see a distance from him, walking in tight circles on the damp, half-white ground. His feet left dark tracks in the remaining snow. Long-dead leaves and pine needles were brought up under his leather boots.

'I feel the cold eating my flesh,' Mablung said. 'And the wetness…I cannot sleep.'

Beleg arose. The woods whispered of the cold. The branches and the trunks complained about its restless fingers. Beleg could hear the constant drip of almost frozen rain stealing from the trees. There was a circle around the moon.

'Where shall we go?' he asked, gathering their damp equipment.

Mablung looked at the dim stars. 'I feel that we might be wanted in the east. I have heard rumours of orc-bands.'

Beleg laughed. 'Shall we go then?' he asked.

With a smile, Mablung lifted his pack and drew his hood down further. 'We shall.'


	3. Chapter 2

_And as the cranes in long line streak the sky_

_And in procession chant their mournful call,_

_So I saw come with sound of wailing by_

_The shadows fluttering in tempest's brawl._

_Whereat, "O Master who are these," I said,_

_"On whom the black winds with their scourges fall?"_

_Dante's The Divine Comedy: Inferno Canto V Translated by Laurence Binyon_

* * *

_Túrin – Five years of age_

* * *

Morwen sat by Lalaith's bed in silence. She knew she should hear their breaths, her heartbeat, the crackle of the fire as it rose to consume, but all those sounds had melded together into silence. Lalaith turned, stretching her hand above her golden head. Her hair was stuck to her face with sweat. She moaned, but her moan was silence.

Carefully, Morwen dabbed at her face with the wet cloth. She smoothed it along her daughter's forehead and against her chin. The scent of sweat and tears rose to meet her as she bent over the child. Lalaith opened her dry mouth, and her breath came out in a silent shudder. Morwen dipped her fingers into the bowl of water – warm from sitting – and pressed them against her daughter's lips. She sucked on the fingers, licked the water off with her dry tongue. A gargle caught in her throat, and she pressed her teeth together, only a little. Her body shuddered against the rough sheets.

Morwen set the cloth down beside the wooden bowl and stood. She passed her hand over the girl's forehead. She was burning. She was always burning. Her cheeks were red beside her flaxen hair, but her lips were almost white. Her foot kicked out with what little strength she had as if she were trying to run away from this nightmare. As if the house were on fire, and she were trying to escape the flames.

In silence Morwen fetched a bowl of broth and brought it to Túrin. Her son lay on his bed with his eyes closed. She pressed a spoon to his lips and waited for him to swallow. He choked the broth down. His face was damp as well, and he reached up to her; his hands were cold and clammy, although his face was warm.

She went back to his sister and tried to get her to drink some of the broth. The child sucked a little from her fingers weakly, and then tried to turn her head away. She would take no more. Morwen placed the broth down. She could feel the nurse behind her; she could feel her words as they reached her ears, but there was only silence. She nodded her head, and she felt the nurse's footsteps as she left. Still there was silence.

Lalaith tried to turn her head again, but it fell back. She had no strength left. Her lashes fluttered, but she could not open her eyes. They remained shut, and her long golden lashes cast shadows over her burning cheeks. She opened her lips, just a little – her white, white lips – and she whimpered. Morwen heard the whimper; it was high and alone. And then there was silence.

* * *

'Where is my sister?' Túrin asked.

The bed where she had lain was empty. He looked up at the nurse who stood over him, sombre. Her hair was tied back tightly into a knock at the back of her head, but strands of it had escaped and, catching the light from the fire, fell over her face, which was worn from age, care, and worry. She bowed her head and made no answer.

'I ask of you,' Túrin said. 'Where is my sister, Lalaith?' His voice rasped from lack of use, and his head still throbbed near his temples; he pressed his fingers to his forehead. 'Where is Lalaith?'

The nurse looked down at her wrinkled hands. They were spotted brown, and the veins crept green towards her fingers. 'Speak no more of Lalaith, son of Hurin;' she said, closing her eyes; slowly she swallowed a dry swallow that stuck in her throat and forced its way out from her mouth as sigh, 'but of your sister Urwen you may ask tidings of your mother.' With that turned away from him, and her shoes hit the floor sharply as she left.

It was forever before Morwen came to him, but she was no longer his mother. Her hair was loose, falling over her shoulders and against her back. It was knotted and free, uncared for; but his mother always kept her hair neat and combed, braided down her back like line. She walked slowly, and there was a bitterness in each step that moved upwards to her lips, but his mother walked with pride, and her lips, though they did not smile, were not drawn with such a pain. Without looking him, she sat herself on a chair beside his bed and picked up a comb, which she dragged through her hair. It caught on the tangles, but she pulled it straight down and then lifted it out again. The teeth were wrapped in the dark strands she had pulled from her head.

Túrin stared at her for a long while, unable to say a word. He watched as she pulled the comb through her hair and again until it was covered in a dark mass of torn locks, and the knots were gone from her head. She placed the comb down and began to braid her hair, straight down her back. She stared of her.

'Mother,' he tried to say, but the word killed itself. _Mother_ he whispered in his mind and looked again at the small, empty bed where his sister had once lain.

'I am no longer sick,' he said. He wanted his mother to smile, the way she did with her eyes. He longed for her to look at him and acknowledge his life, but she just continued to plait her hair, yanking it so tight it clung to her skull. 'And I wish to see Urwen,' he continued. She did not look at him; she tied the end of the braid. 'But why must I not say Lalaith anymore?'

For the first time, Morwen looked at him. Her eyes were dark and hard and impossible to understand or not comprehend. He knew everything she was feeling in that one moment, but none of it made any sense in his mind. He could not know what she was thinking.

'Because Urwen is dead,' she said. 'And laughter is stilled in this house.' She stared hard at him, and he wanted to run from her, but he was captured by her gaze and the pain in his own heart, slowly starting to prick and spread across his body.

She stood, and her back was straight, and her bearing proud. 'But you live, son of Morwen; and so does the enemy who has done this to us.'

No words could he say, and she left him alone again.

* * *

The body lay on the wet grass. A hand with only three fingers stretched out towards the rising sun. Blood dripped from a slit wrist onto the ground and soaked into the frozen mud. The face was angry, bewildered; the eyes, still open, stared in fear at the clear blue sky. The arrow was pierced deep into its side.

'They have come close, Aglarlim,' Beleg said. He stood over the dead Orc, not touching it.

Aglarlim stepped closer, his feet making no sound on the ground. His shadow fell over Beleg and the Orc, and quivered as he swayed. 'Were there others? Do you know?'

With a shake of his head, Beleg knelt beside the Orc and pried the arrow from its body. 'No, I saw no others.' He dropped the arrow onto the ground. 'But that does not mean there are no others here. Although, perchance it was lost.' He brushed the bloodied arrow against the grass and then shoved it into his quiver. 'It was starving,' he said. 'The bones of its ribs are plainly visible.' He stood again, and turned to his companion.

'We should report this then?' Aglarlim said. He watched the dead Orc from the corner of his eye, but he did not look at it straight.

'The king should know,' Beleg said. 'This is the second such Orc found near to here within the past three months. Something may be stirring.'


End file.
